The conservative case in favor of same-sex marriage

11:58 AM,
May 19, 2013

Written by

Jonathan Rauch

"It became a cascade." Dale Carpenter, a friend who e-mailed those words from Minneapolis, was writing about the unexpectedly lopsided vote for same-sex marriage in the Minnesota House last week (the state Senate approved it Monday, and the governor has signed it), but he might have been writing about the whole marriage movement.

This month, Rhode Island and Delaware approved gay marriage. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court could restore it in California. If that happens, nearly 30 percent of the population will live in gay-marriage states.